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InflateSail (QB50 GB06)

InflateSail is a British 3U-CubeSat developed by SSC (Surrey Space Centre) at the University of Surrey and is one of the technology demonstrators of the QB50 mission.

The InflateSail nanosatellite is equipped with a 1 m long inflatable boom and 10 m2 deorbiting sail. InflateSail’s primary goal is to demonstrate the effectiveness of using a drag sail in LEO to increase the rate at which satellites lose altitude and reenter the Earth’s atmosphere. A system like this could be fitted before launch to any satellite bound for LEO, and then used at the end of the satellite’s life to remove it from orbit, and prevent the satellite from being involved in any potentially disastrous debris-creating collisions in the future.

The QB50 project, which will demonstrate the possibility of launching a network of 50 CubeSats built by Universities Teams all over the world as a primary payload on a low-cost launch vehicle to perform first-class science in the largely unexplored lower thermosphere.

The satellite is one of two QB50 IOD satellites, which were to be launched on a Dnepr rocket on the QB50-DS flight. As the availability of Dnepr has become doubtful, they were transfered to an Indian PSLV-XL launch.